PrivacyThere is no privacy issue here. This is a public place; if you make comments here then anyone can read them. Having a conversation on this board or posting information on LSN is not fundamentally different from having a conversation or posting information in the halls of your favorite law school.

Even if you desired or intended for your conversation/information to be private, you willingly acted in a public place. Naked people in a mall cannot complain about voyeurs.

HonestyIf someone were to deceive the adcomms, and information on LSD/LSN helped to uncover that dishonesty, then I think it is a good thing. Two examples: one, imagine that Applicant X intentionally did not send a transcript to LSDAS from a summer school program. They got 2 bad grades in that program and it would bring down their GPA. Their main undergrad school never knew about it, so it is not on any other transcripts. During the application process Applicant X then reveals this on LSD. If the adcomms were to read it, then I would hope that they would follow-up on the issue. I don't think they should automatically reject the applicant, but I think they should investigate.

Example two: Applicant Y claims to be a resident of State E where College E is located. To be a resident you have to meet 3 criteria. Applicant Y reads the criteria and honestly believes that he is a resident. Applicant Y has discussions on LSD about residency and applications. College E reads the threads and realizes that Applicant Y has misunderstood the criteria. Again, the school should investigate, not eliminate.

In either case, this prevents people from cheating the system.

Playing by their own rulesThere is a constraint on the actions of law schools though. If a school makes a big deal out of the fact that they do not make marks in people's files based on phone calls, visits, interviews, etc, then I think they should not read LSD/LSN during application season.

It is not ethical for them to break their own guidelines when they were too short sighted to realize that they might actually want to use information not contained in the application to make admission decisions.

ConclusionUnless adcomms say they won't consider information outside of the application, it is a good idea for them to read LSD and LSN. Ultimately, everyone needs to practice discretion, because the Internet is not a private forum.

PrivacyThere is no privacy issue here. This is a public place; if you make comments here then anyone can read them. Having a conversation on this board or posting information on LSN is not fundamentally different from having a conversation or posting information in the halls of your favorite law school.

Even if you desired or intended for your conversation/information to be private, you willingly acted in a public place. Naked people in a mall cannot complain about voyeurs.

HonestyIf someone were to deceive the adcomms, and information on LSD/LSN helped to uncover that dishonesty, then I think it is a good thing. Two examples: one, imagine that Applicant X intentionally did not send a transcript to LSDAS from a summer school program. They got 2 bad grades in that program and it would bring down their GPA. Their main undergrad school never knew about it, so it is not on any other transcripts. During the application process Applicant X then reveals this on LSD. If the adcomms were to read it, then I would hope that they would follow-up on the issue. I don't think they should automatically reject the applicant, but I think they should investigate.

Example two: Applicant Y claims to be a resident of State E where College E is located. To be a resident you have to meet 3 criteria. Applicant Y reads the criteria and honestly believes that he is a resident. Applicant Y has discussions on LSD about residency and applications. College E reads the threads and realizes that Applicant Y has misunderstood the criteria. Again, the school should investigate, not eliminate.

In either case, this prevents people from cheating the system.

Playing by their own rulesThere is a constraint on the actions of law schools though. If a school makes a big deal out of the fact that they do not make marks in people's files based on phone calls, visits, interviews, etc, then I think they should not read LSD/LSN during application season.

It is not ethical for them to break their own guidelines when they were too short sighted to realize that they might actually want to use information not contained in the application to make admission decisions.

ConclusionUnless adcomms say they won't consider information outside of the application, it is a good idea for them to read LSD and LSN. Ultimately, everyone needs to practice discretion, because the Internet is not a private forum.

Don't underestimate the advantage of being a native of the town where you go to school. I think that your GPA will likely be higher in Chicago just because you won't have to spend time learning the town.

Many of the schools have significantly larger data sets, so they might skew the data. Out of the ~4000 records, less than 400 had clean enough data to use. So, the self-reporting aspect and non-standardized data could also skew the result. I did not try to do a correlation analysis, because I am not good at it. If someone knows how and wants the raw data, then email me.

The result is completely depressing to me. Basically, after about 6 weeks, your chance of getting admitted is below average. There are exceptions in this data, but that seems to be the trend.

I calculated the amount of time it took to get a decision after the complettion date (in weeks). The chart below has three lines. The pink line is the overall acceptance rate in the data (44%). The blue line is the % of people that got accepted during that week. The curved black line is the trend of the blue line (square regression).

I don't know if it is a bad idea to apply this cycle and re-apply next cycle. However, statistically, there are schools that will accept you. University of Baltimore seems to have accepted people with LSAT scores of 149 and 150, so I don't think your score is out of the question.

The numbers on ChiaShu http://www.chiashu.com for Baltimore are not particularly encouraging even with a 3.75 GPA; however, there are a number of schools that you could likely attend this cycle.

I can understand why you are disappointed by a 144. The good news is that you can raise your score.